[14] The keel-boat was usually from sixty to seventy feet long, and fifteen to eighteen broad at beam, with a keel extending from bow to stern, and had a draft of twenty to thirty inches. When descending the stream, the force of the current, with occasional aid from the pole, was the usual mode of locomotion. In ascending the stream, however, sails, poles, and almost every known device were used; not infrequently the vessel was towed by from twenty to forty men, with a rope several hundred feet in length attached to the mast. These boats were built in Pittsburg at a cost of two to three thousand dollars each.
The barge was constructed for narrow, shallow water. As a rule it was larger than the keel-boat; but of less draft, and afforded greater accommodations for passengers.
Broad-horn was a term generally applied to the Mississippi and Ohio flat-boat, which made its advent on the Western waters later than the barge or the keel-boat. It was a large, unwieldy structure, with a perfectly flat bottom, perpendicular sides, and usually covered its entire length. It was used only for descending the stream.
"The earliest improvement upon the canoe was the pirogue, an invention of the whites. Like the canoe, this is hewed out of the solid log; the difference is, that the pirogue has greater width and capacity, and is composed of several pieces of timbers—as if the canoe was sawed lengthwise into two equal sections, and a broad flat piece of timber inserted in the middle, so as to give greater breadth of beam to the vessel." Hall, Notes on the Western States, p. 218.—Ed.
[15] Flint.—Flagg.
[16] For an account of the first steamboat on the Ohio, see Flint's Letters, in our volume ix, p. 154, note 76.—Ed.
[17] Latrobe.—Flagg.
Comment by Ed. Charles J. Latrobe (1801-75) visited the United States in 1832-33. His Rambles in North America in 1832-3 (New York, 1835) and Rambles in Mexico (New York and London, 1836) have much value in the history of Western travel.
[18] The first steamer upon the waters of the Red River was of a peculiar construction: her steam scape-pipe, instead of ascending perpendicularly from the hurricane deck, projected from the bow, and terminated in the form of a serpent's head. As this monster ascended the wilds of the stream, with her furnaces blazing, pouring forth steam with a roar, the wondering Choctaws upon the banks gave her the poetic and appropriate name of Pinelore, "the Fire-Canoe."—Flagg.
[19] This quotation is from Botanic Gardens, book i, chapter i, by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802).—Ed.